The present invention relates to a machine for producing and dispensing products such as ice creams, granita or frozen beverages, of the type comprising a tank for the product, which contains a cooling evaporation cylinder around which a motor-driven mixer element rotates.
Usually, in machines of the prior art the mixer element is operated by a shaft which passes through the rear wall of the tank axially with respect to the evaporation cylinder so as to reach a motor unit or gearmotor which is arranged in the rear part of the machine, behind the product tank. Usually the motor of the gearmotor has an axis which is parallel to the axis of the cylinder. The rear part of the machine is therefore very deep since it must contain the gearmotor.
In an attempt to reduce the overall dimensions, in the prior art machines have been proposed where the gearmotor has a gear train arranged so as to extend substantially vertically (namely in a direction transverse to the axis of rotation of the mixer element and the motor), for example with a gear train which displaces the axis of the motor downwards with respect to the axis of the mixer. In some known solutions, the axis is displaced such that the motor may be housed underneath the tank. This, however, results in the motor occupying the space in the bottom of the machine where the refrigerating circuit of the machine is also housed. This results in the need for a larger sized base and represents a constraint for arrangement of the parts of the refrigerating circuit.
A further disadvantage is that the gear train used is per se bulky and, often, noisy.